This really is something straight out of cinema….or an Amelia Earheart playbook. From BBC, where you can read a lot more on what’s going on:

A Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing went missing late on Friday, with 239 passengers and crew on board.

But that, so far, is all anyone knows for sure about flight MH370.

In a hyper-connected age where we are constantly tracked, the void feels more like a mystery from an earlier era of aviation than something happening to one of the world’s biggest airlines flying a busy route in 2014, and has prompted much speculation about its fate.

There were 227 passengers, including 153 Chinese and 38 Malaysians, according to the manifest. Seven were children. All 12 crew members were Malaysian.

Among the Chinese nationals were a delegation of 19 prominent artists who had attended an exhibition in Kuala Lumpur.

With so many of their nationals aboard, the Chinese government has been very involved in the search, expressing barely-concealed frustration with the lack of progress. On Thursday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told reporters in Beijing that he would like to see better co-ordination among the countries involved, as passengers’ families and friends “are burning with anxiety”.

Two Iranian men were travelling on stolen passports, Interpol said in a statement. They are believed to have been en route to Europe via Beijing.

Malaysian police named one as 19-year-old Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad. Interpol identified the other as Delavar Seyed Mohammadreza, 29. There were no apparent links to terrorist groups, officials said.

Initially, national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar denied a statement by the aviation chief that there were five passengers who checked-in for the flight but did not board. Malaysia Airlines later clarified there had been four passengers who did not show up at the airport for the flight.

Read more over at BBC.